The Philadelphia Police Department put 72 officers on desk duty pending an internal affairs investigation of racist, offensive, or otherwise inflamatory social media posts documented by an online advocacy group.

The Plain View Project spent a year undercover in racist Facebook groups, gathering horrendous comments by group members and matching to the social media profiles to real life police officers.  The comments by 2,900 current and former police officers from across the US ranged from racist memes, to posts celebrating violence, to messages containing Islamophobic themes, and other offensive material.

These were gathered into a database first reported by Buzzfeed News.  The Plain View Project wants the information to spark a discussions on whether the online behavior could undermine public trust in police and make it more difficult for officers to work with minority communities.

"We are equally as disgusted by many of the posts that you saw and in many cases, the rest of the nation saw," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross.  "We've talked about from the outset how disturbing, how disappointing and upsetting these posts are," he told reporters.  "They will undeniably impact police-community relations."

The top prosecutor in Saint Louis, Missouri - Kimberly M. Gardner - added the names of 22 cops implicated in the investigation to her list of officers banned from bringing cases to her office.  That brings to 60 the number of Saint Louis cops who are deemed so untrustworthy that her office won't issue charges based on their investigations, won’t apply for search warrants they seek, and won't consider cases in which they are essential witnesses.